"Sinecure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a clouded brow, but the man of the world knew whom he had to deal with. On Wednesday morning Jacobina was inducted into the comforts of the hearth of mine host;—and her four little kittens mewed hard by, from the sinecure of a basket ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Turmoil Sinecure Waist Shrew Potential Spaniel Crazy Character Candidate Indomitable Infringe Rascal Amorphous Expend Thermometer Charm Rather Tall Stepchild Wedlock Ghostly Haggard Bridal Pioneer Pluck Noon Neighbor ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our Sunday clothes,—and it was no sinecure to dress three persistently undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see us look our ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the energetic admiral, no sinecure. He was kept constantly moving from one point to the other, to see that all was going on well, and to report the progress made. The work never ceased, night or day, and for the first week neither Francis, nor his commander, ever went to bed, contenting ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... new Hospital at Marlborough was filled to its utmost capacity and Evadne found her work no sinecure. The force of nurses was inadequate to the demand. Often she would be called from her rest to minister to the critical cases which were her special care, and she would go down to the ward saying softly, "The ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... mention the affair of the railway station which was built too far from the town, and this of the Sidi Mansur water. And who, you ask, was to blame for these follies? Oh, the controlleur, as usual; always the controlleur! It is no sinecure being an official of this kind in Tunisia, with precise Government instructions in one pocket, and in the other his countrymen's contrary lamentations ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... acting Vice-Consul, is a quaint and most good-natured little man—a Prussian by birth. He is overwhelmed by the sudden importance he has acquired from his office, and by the amount of work (for which he gets no pay) entailed by it,—the office of British Consul having been a comparative sinecure before ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... the high and arduous position of wife to such a man as Barty Josselin is well known to the world at large. It was no sinecure! but she gloried in it; and to her thorough apprehension and management of their joint lives and all that came of them, as well as to her beauty and sense and genial warmth, was due her great popularity for many years in an immense and ever-widening circle, where the memory of her is still ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... restrictions as said trustees may prescribe, the right and privilege of access to the same, that thereby the memory and love for the poet and the man may be cherished and perpetuated." Mr. Ordway was made president of the board, and in his hands the office has been no sinecure. His unflagging zeal and his unerring good taste have resulted not only in putting the ancient house into the perfect order of the olden time, but in fertilizing the wornout fields, and preserving for future ages one of ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... sinecure offices are held in more or less respect, and as the belfry—man of Vondervotteimittiss has the most perfect of sinecures, he is the most perfectly respected of any man in the world. He is the chief dignitary of the borough, and the very pigs look ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... numbers cannot all be provided for by these channels, and it is the country at large which is taxed to supply the means of sustenance to the younger scions of nobility; taxed directly in the shape of place and sinecure, indirectly in various ways, but in no way so heavily as by the monopoly of the East India Company, which has so long been permitted to oppress the nation, that these detrimentals (as they have named themselves) ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lacking in Reverence." But it is droll enough to fancy the scene—the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a parcel of unruly girls, with the graces of one so tugging at his heartstrings! His path might at least have been spared the thorn of having his fault denounced by the very voice that had ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... constitution' precisely in this state. He condemned political institutions worked for the benefit of a class, and leading, especially in legal matters, to endless abuses and chicanery. The abuses everywhere imply 'inequality' in some sense; for they arise from monopoly. The man who holds a sinecure, or enjoys a privilege, uses it for his own private interest. The 'matter of corruption,' as Bentham called it, was provided by the privilege and the sinecure. The Jacobin might denounce privileges simply as privileges, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Fifth into a premature grave, needed a firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand, but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen that Graham's post was no sinecure. It was Harrison's custom to throw off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into constant contact with Graham. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... would I find any one better?" said he. "Doing the work for a lone man who comes as irregularly to meals as a twenty-four-hour day will permit is no sinecure. She furnishes little sunshine in the home, but she does manage to produce a hot dinner at ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... bodies committed to the dust in Christian fashion. In parishes like these of the Lizard, and on the north Cornwall coast at places like Morwenstow, this duty of giving Christian sepulture has been no sinecure. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... I wonder at a girl of your knowledge and talent asking a question like that! Is there a scoundrel in Gloria who is not his enemy? Is there a man who has succeeded in getting any sinecure office from the State who doesn't know that the moment Ericson comes back to Gloria out he goes, neck and crop? Is there a corrupt judge in Gloria who wouldn't, if he could, sentence Ericson to be shot the moment he ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... oyster in my life, and as I am touching upon gastronomy, I may also mention that I never touch cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But my friends kindly provided some impromptu dishes without cheese or oysters and other, to me, objectionable things. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... they did, if ever I was so fortunate," he went on in a low tone, "you would find your office no sinecure. I have troubles, or rather, one trouble, and a ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "It is no sinecure—the life of the logging camp. A hundred times you will be called upon to face battle, murder, and sudden death, and it will be up to ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... was Joint Chief Clerk of the Pleas in the Queen's Bench, a sinecure conferred on him by his father, who was Lord Chief Justice of the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann—or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which—a snuffy, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... cure or sinecure; To feed from the superfluous taxes A friend of ours—a poet—fewer 660 Have fluttered tamer to the lure Than he.' His ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ambassador at Vienna, or at any other court of the earth? Cannot his actual diplomatic functions be amply served for a tenth of the money? Or what is the actual result, but to furnish, in nine instances out of ten, a splendid sinecure to some man of powerful interest, without any, or but slight, reference to his faculties? Or is there any necessity for endowing an embassy with an enormous income of this order, to provide dinners, and balls, and a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... tried it in modern times say that to be a gentleman is no sinecure, and the well-bred author falls in with this sentiment, though still regarding it as ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... I would as soon laugh at a kitchen poker."—"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already, and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not, as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such perfect success, for the company turned ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of travelling through his grammar and prosody. Under the stern rule, indeed, of George Buchanan, who did not approve of the vicarious mode of punishment, James bore the penance of his own faults, and Mungo Malagrowther enjoyed a sinecure; but James's other pedagogue, Master Patrick Young, went more ceremoniously to work, and appalled the very soul of the youthful king by the floggings which he bestowed on the whipping-boy, when the royal ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the exponent, the algebraic power, of the Church processions which abound this month; and he is as faithful to them as Boswell to Johnson;—wherever they appear, he is there to console and refresh. Nor is his office a sinecure now; and let us hope that he has his small profits, as well as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... have trouble with her," said Anna-Rose, not heeding his consolations. "It isn't a sinecure, I assure you, being left sole guardian and protector of somebody as pretty as all that. And the worst of it is she's going on getting prettier. She hasn't nearly come to the end of what she can do in that direction. I see it growing on her. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... be seen by the foregoing sketch that a clerkship in the Railway Mail Service is far from being a sinecure, either mentally or physically. As the country increases in population and the system becomes more complex, it is found to be important to the public that the clerks should be insured against removal except for the following reasons: "Intemperance, inattention ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... he perceived he must be madly in love with her. So with the consent of the signora he had arranged a correspondence between the young people; and all went on well at first,—the letters from both passing through his hands. But his office was anything but a sinecure, for while the Doctor was on his part of a cold temperament, and disposed to regard the affair merely as a proper way of providing for the natural affections, the Paronsina cared nothing for him personally, and only viewed him favorably as abstract matrimony,—as the means of escaping ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of them. Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and .. with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... have frankly owned, had they been asked, that they detested work of any kind. Yet the chaplain had almost as much business on his hands as the bursar of a great college, in the administration of Carew's affairs, besides filling an office which was by no means a sinecure, in that of his master of the ceremonies. Many a rudeness in that house would have been bitterly avenged, and many a quarrel would have had a serious termination, but for the good offices of Parson Whymper. ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... strength. He very properly remained at One Ton Camp and made his depot on 10th March, and after satisfying himself that over a month's travelling rations were in the depot, Cherry-Garrard started homeward, but he had by no means a sinecure in this journey back—his dogs went wild at the start, smashed the sledge-meter adrift, fought, and would keep no definite direction, thick weather set in, and they had ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... our oldest sister and tea-maker general. She had no sinecure office of it; but, in spite often of the most remarkable demands, she dispensed the beverage with the most perfect justice and good humour. Not unsatisfactory were the visits paid to the sideboard, covered as it was with brawn, and ham, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... mother to go to for advice in every doubt and perplexity, and with a dozen or more of well-trained servants at her command, her post, though no sinecure, did not burden her with its duties; she still could find time for the cultivation of mind and heart, for daily walks and rides, and the enjoyment of society both at ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... thought he left him little to do then," said the clerk; "and yet Goodman Thong had no sinecure of it with our friend, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Venetian, and, in fact, a spy of the Republic. All transactions of buying and selling were carried out by Venetian brokers, of whom some thirty were appointed. As time went on, some of these brokerships must have resolved themselves into sinecure offices, for we find Bellini holding one, and certainly without discharging any of the original duties, and they seem to have become some sort of State retainerships. In 1505 the old Fondaco had been burnt to the ground, and the present building was rising when Giorgione ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... your scruples, Elsmere,' said the Liberal tutor with emphasis. 'No one can say a living with 1200 souls, and no curate, is a sinecure. As for hard town work, it is absurd—you couldn't stand it. And after all, I imagine, there are some souls worth saving out of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... elegantly-dressed gentlemen and ladies; but no—western men, in palmetto hats and great boots, lounged upon the superb sofas, and negroes and negresses chattered and promenaded. Porcelain spittoons in considerable numbers garnished the floor, and their office was by no means a sinecure one, even in the saloon ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... rides with a jingling pouch, How it blabs of the rifled poor! The courtier he lolls in his gilded coach, —How it smacks of a sinecure! ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... annual receipt of forty-three pounds, out of which he had to pay me, but with the aid of a little simony, this was easily avoided, and as I took no fees, I can hardly call it a lucrative appointment, and certainly not a sinecure. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... of cattle through a strange wild country is no sinecure. There was not a man in the Double A outfit who expected an easy time in trailing the herd to Las Vegas, for it was a rough, grim country, and the men ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of performing the duties of the office, they may be very sure of my not accepting it. I know not in what light they may look upon it, but for my own part, I do not in the least regard it as a favor conferred upon me. It is no sinecure; and if my services are an equivalent for my salary, there is no favor done me; if they be not, I do not desire the situation. . . . I feel no kind of anxiety for my future prospects. Thanks to your goodness, I have received a good education. I know you cannot ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... was no sinecure, for everyone started tea-drinking afresh to encourage the travellers, and amidst the babble of voices Jack's sotto voce explanations made the conversation intelligible, and took away the feeling of being ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... man, a great lover of little girls, who combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for such a sheep, passed ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... to be no sinecure appointment, but he took it quite complacently, giving a few orders for the comfort of his staying patients, and without further incident the night fell, when a small hand-lamp was placed in the little tent, and the doctor announced that he was going to watch ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough; for, in spite of secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as useless an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and coronation armour)—in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough of saving capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own all-conquering quills—in spite, also, (keen-eyed categorists, be to my faults in ratiocination a little blind, for very cheerfulness,) ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... not really wish to tax his old servant with any labor at all. He wished his office to be as much of a sinecure as possible. And he continually urged the professor to go abroad and see the city sights, or to walk in the garden and enjoy his pipe, or rest himself in his own room, or visit his daughter, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... praiser of the golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble. And as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol: he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of God! Frank loved the look of nature that lay open all around him, but not his own books. He abhorred study, and only submitted to it from a sense of duty. His father, at Lady Oldfield's urgent request, kept him at home, and engaged a private tutor for him, whose office would have been a sinecure but for the concern it gave him to find his pupil so hard to drag along the most level paths of learning. Dog's-ears disfigured Frank's books, the result simply of restless fingers; and dog's heads; executed in a masterly style, were the subjects of his pen. He loved roaming ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... scrawls a card; Constant at routs, familiar with a round Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor; Ambitions of preferment for its gold, And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, By infidelity and love o' the world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride.— From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, Preserve the Church! and lay not careless hands On skulls that cannot teach, and will ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... work, but with a heart full of misgivings. He would have liked to persuade himself that that was the end of the episode, but he could not do it. He foresaw that his job as president of a railroad would not be a sinecure. ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... am willing to do him any good, that will do me no harm. Pray advise with Walls and Raymond, and a little with Bishop Sterne for form. Tell Raymond I cannot succeed for him to get that living of Moimed. It is represented here as a great sinecure. Several chaplains have solicited for it; and it has vexed me so, that, if I live, I will make it my business to serve him better in something else. I am heartily sorry for his illness, and that of the other two. If it be not ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... seeing Millicent often, watched and studied her carefully in the hope that his mind would produce a happy thought in the way of work for her. He perceived that she needed some well paid sinecure. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... and preference. These are usually interspersed with solos on the flageolet, to contrast with obligati for the ophecleido; the drummers—side, long, and double—are seldom inactive; the trombones and trumpets have no sinecure, and there is always a great mortality amongst the fiddle-strings. Eight bars of impossible variation is sure to be succeeded by sixteen of the deafening fanfare of trumpets, combined with smashing cymbalism, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... lethargic or antagonistic he may greatly hinder the Church's work; but if in a friendly spirit and with words of wisdom he is always ready to meet the Rector and consult as to the advisability of this or that particular course of action, the office becomes neither a surplusage nor a sinecure. There is nothing worse in a parish than either clerical or lay clan-ship. Isolation is good neither for the one nor the other. The interests of both are the same, and surely their hands should be joined together for common action in ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... put you to every possible use; you may be quite certain that your position will not be a sinecure." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... The post was no sinecure. It was an arduous task to plan, found, and construct, in all its grades, the education of such a country as India. The means at Macaulay's disposal were utterly inadequate for the undertaking on which he was engaged. Nothing resembling an organised staff was as yet ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... institutions a cricket club was started soon after I first came, and I was able to lend a meadow in which the members could play. I held the sinecure office of President. The members met, discussed ways and means, drew up regulations, and instituted fines for various delinquencies. Swearing was expensive at threepence each time, but there was no definition of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... staff upon its parapet to angle upon; being then engaged, as chief of a hydrographic surveying party, in surveying the approaches to Boston Harbor. Then its garrison consisted of a superannuated sergeant whose office was a sinecure; now it held an armed garrison, who drilled and paraded every day, with all the "pomp and circumstance" of war, to the patriotic tune of "John Brown's body lies a-moulding in the grave, but his spirit is marching ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... abandoned to weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law, "in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... improved in essentials. In bygone days, a man who became a Minister proceeded to secure his own fortune; then he provided for all his relatives, his hangers-on, his very jockeys and footmen. One lord held eight sinecure offices, and was besides colonel of two regiments. A Chancellor of the Exchequer cleared four hundred thousand on a new loan, and the bulk of this large sum remained in his own pocket, for he had but few associates ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... found, it was rare indeed that there were any complaints of scarcity of work, except, indeed, on the part of the Rector, who declared that, what with the healthiness of the village and the absence of want, his occupation, save for the Sunday duty, was a sinecure. Mr. Bastow was more happy and much brighter than he had been for many years. The occupation of teaching suited him, and he was able to make the work pleasant to his pupil as well as to himself; indeed, it occupied but a small portion ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... 1798 he became Lieutenant-General, and in 1801 was entrusted with the command of the town of Plymouth, in anticipation of an attack upon that place by the French fleet. The attack never took place, and his command proved a sinecure. From this time forward we have but meagre accounts of him until a short time before his death, which, as the monumental tablet has already informed us, took place on the 25th of October, 1806. During the summer of that year he had ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... what was lost overnight, these proud and often honourable nobles would ante-chamber and cringe for sinecures, pensions, indemnities, privileges, importune and supplicate the King, the King's mistress, pandar or lacquey. And the sinecure, pension, indemnity or privilege was always deducted out of the bread—rye-bread, straw-bread, grass-bread—which those parched, prone human animals described by La Bruyere were extracting "with desperate obstinacy"—out of the ever more sterile ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... largely increased and ennobled activity. A great deal of very cheap ridicule has been cast upon the Christian conception of the future life as if it was an eternity of idleness and of repose. Of repose, yes; of idleness, no! For it is no sinecure to be the governor of ten cities. There will be a good deal of work to be done, in order to discharge that office properly. Only it will be work that does not disturb repose, and at one and the same moment His servants will serve in constant activity, and gaze upon His face in calm ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so rigged to the rear sled that the last man can drop it down to the ice and anchor it by the grip of the nails, thereby retarding its speed. The steersman on the mammoth Ponkapoag bob-sled steered by a rope bridle and the use of his feet on a stout wooden cross-bar, and his position was no sinecure. He had at least a ton of people on board and he ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... played chaperon to her elder sister. It was a position for which she felt herself peculiarly fitted, even without the semi-official commission she held—a position which so conscientious a person could not regard in the light of a sinecure. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Era. It taking over the publication of this sheet he had remarked that life was altogether too short to permit of attempting anything worth while; and so he forthwith made no further assaults upon fame—assuming that he had ever done so—but settled comfortably down to the enjoyment of his sinecure. He had never married. And as justification for his self-imposed celibacy he pompously quoted Kant: "I am a bachelor, and I could not cease to be a bachelor without a disturbance that would be intolerable to me." Yet he was not a misogynist. He simply shirked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... across the breakfast cup was also denied them; the duty had to be performed In town, lest the wind should blow the local journal into the hands of the enemy and reveal—nothing at all. The position of the barrier guard ceased to be—if it ever were—a sinecure, and he was kept busy picking pockets, examining bills, perusing love-letters, written in all sorts of prose, and in verse which was homely, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... his, you know. And even if his health does give out, his college pals will always find him some sort of sinecure. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... above the casual person will perhaps believe that a singer's life is really not a bit of a sinecure, even when he has attained the measure of this world's approval and applause afforded ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... be opposition I count on the Vails against me. Alfred has for some time been hostile because I could not if I would, and would not if I could, find him a snug sinecure in some of the companies. I fear George has in some degree given way to the same spirit. I have heard of his complaining of me, and when, before my departure for the West, I tendered my services to negotiate a connection of himself and brother ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... inscribed the name of Isaac Casaubon. We know him by repute only as a celebrated French scholar, who was tempted from his native land by King James I. with the offer of a fat canonry at Canterbury, but who only lived to enjoy the sinecure post—he was a layman—four years. Surely there must be fishermen amongst us: to them the initials I. W. scratched upon Casaubon's memorial may recall the great angler, Isaac [Transcriber's note: "Izaak" ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or ribbon, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should retire, after saving the state, he must sell his coach horses and his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread, his hands were clean. They had never received, they had never given, the price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stationed in the centre of waterworks for the purpose of increasing, slackening, or otherwise altering their movements. But this rational soul is a very needless appendage to either the Cartesian or the Huxleian system, wherein, if its post be not a literal sinecure, there is, at any rate, little or nothing for it to do which might not quite as well be done without it. The hydraulic engineer, sitting in his central office, has to wind up the whole machinery from time to time, and to turn now this tap, now that, when he wishes ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... about her own concerns, she gave no reason for her abrupt determination to leave the country; but from subsequent talk Polly gathered that, for one thing, Zara had found her position at the head of John's establishment—"Undertaken in the first place, my dear, at immense personal sacrifice!"—no sinecure. John had proved a regular martinet; he had countermanded her orders, interfered about the household bills—had even accused her of lining her own pocket. As for little Johnny—the bait originally thrown out to induce ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... much overtaxed. The nizam's taste for splendor and his desire to outdo all the other native princes in display have caused the government of India considerable anxiety, and the British resident at his capital, whose duty is to keep him straight, enjoys no sinecure. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... allegiance to the Emperor, and the long line of petty tyrants did not come to an end until Pope Eugenius the Fourth beheaded the last of the race for his misdeeds in the fifteenth century; after him the office was seized upon by the Barons and finally drifted into the hands of the Barberini, a mere sinecure bringing rich endowments to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the centuries we have always the advantage of selecting our own position in life, and perhaps there are few that for such purposes we should prefer to Walpole's. We should lap ourselves against eating cares in the warm folds of a sinecure of 6,000l. a year bestowed because our father was a Prime Minister. There are many immaculate persons at the present day to whom truth would be truth even when seen through such a medium. There are—we have their own authority for believing it—men ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... however, for the promotion left him still on the post-captains' list, seven from its head; but he received, what was both complimentary and profitable, the honorary rank of Colonel of Marines,—a sinecure appointment, of which there were then four, given to post-captains of distinguished services, and vacated by them upon promotion. These are now discontinued, and replaced, as a matter of emolument, by Good Service Pensions. Nelson heard ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... but with the view "Of selling my own works. "The tip's a good one, as for literature "It gives no man a sinecure." ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... priests, the Sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy. The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and the hands and performers are kicking because we are a month behind on salaries, and they get drunk whenever any jay will buy for them. Everybody gives passes to everybody that wants to get in the show, so the box office man has a sinecure, and people chase us from town to town for money for board, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... Picard. It was she who in the last years of the Second Empire had taught him bezique in all its varieties—Japanese, Chinese, etc. He was then twenty, Mme. Picard was forty. She was not then box-opener of the National Academy of Music; she had in those times as office—and it was not a sinecure—the position of aunt to a nice young person who showed a very pretty face and a very pretty pair of legs in the chorus of the revues of the Varietee. And the prince, while quite young, at the beginning of his life, had, for three ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... comet; "Have you heard of the battle?" it is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go and see it at Charing Cross. Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don't quite like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should no longer be a sinecure. I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute: besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug. If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer—not, my child, that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... trained to business; for no literary class as yet existed, excepting it might be the priesthood. Chaucer, the father of English poetry, was first a soldier, and afterwards a comptroller of petty customs. The office was no sinecure either, for he had to write up all the records with his own hand; and when he had done his "reckonings" at the custom-house, he returned with delight to his favourite studies at home—poring over his books until his eyes were "dazed" ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... thirty others stood, with loaded muskets, keeping guard all round the place to prevent them doing any mischief. Although a clever medicine man becomes of great importance in his tribe, his post is no sinecure either before or after his initiation. If he should be seen by anyone while he is communing with the spirits in the woods, he is killed or commits suicide, while if he fails in the cure of any man he is liable to be put ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... they are afraid, and not a moment longer. For instance, why should that fellow stop? He saw three men whom he knew were armed, besides that young man who's pretending to sail the boat—why don't you do it, Kit?" and Waldo laughed good-humoredly at the lad whose office had become a sinecure. "When you get used to them, Mr. Harwin," he added, "they will not ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... of high stature, with broad shoulders and florid complexion, loved to dine well, and spent his time between billiards, "Calvados" and perorations in the cafes. For taking this part in the conspiracy he expected a fat sinecure on the return of the Bourbons, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... spirited, who had hung on at his post during the German occupation, and done his best to protect his fellow-townsmen against the lust and rapine of the Huns. Under such circumstances the office of municipal magistrate is no sinecure. It is, in fact, a position of deadly peril, for by the doctrine of vicarious punishment, peculiar to the German Staff, an innocent man is held liable with his life for the faults of his fellow-townsmen, and, it may be, for those of the enemy also. Doubtless ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and listening to her the man beside her could not believe that depravity of any sort or degree entered into the girl's nature, yet he wanted to believe that she had not been virtuous, for otherwise his task was less a sinecure—the Hon. Morison ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the castle is at present altogether a sinecure; formerly this was the regular seat of the insular government; but now it is quite deserted, save by the individual who has the privilege of showing the place ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... sinecure which the poet is now supposed to have retained, was a grant of twenty-five crowns every four months on the episcopal chancery of Milan: so, to help out his petty income, he proceeded to enter into the service of Alfonso, which shews that both the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... his bed again—his body glowing through his night-dress, and his eyes staring wildly about him. It was evidently impossible to leave him, and so I spent the rest of the night nodding and shivering in the armchair. No, it was certainly not a sinecure that ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... directness of his assaults. At length, however, he gave way to years, and retired from public life. His party handsomely acknowledged his services by a retiring pension, which Mr Pitt, when minister, exchanged for the clerkship of the pells, thus disburdening the nation by substituting a sinecure. For many years before his death, Barre was unfortunately deprived of sight; but, under that heaviest of all afflictions, he retained his practical philosophy, enjoyed the society of his friends, and was cheerful to the last. He was at length ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... to have him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... before) that it is there mentioned 'during good behaviour,' and not for life, upon which condition alone his father would have accepted it. He adds that it was given to him as totally and absolutely a sinecure, and that his appointment took place at so early a period of life that it would be impossible for him ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... I do not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, some fractious, and each class required different ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... creator christened her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world and teach it ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... to do some chaperoning at last, am I?" queried her father. "The job has ceased to be a sinecure. I suppose I'll have to do all the talking, since young girls, of course, may only speak when spoken to and then must answer with a yes or no. Really, my dear, you're setting ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... already," he muttered, "and he'll have the wheat too! The whole shoot has gone to the deuce!" For the innkeeper of the csarda does not live by only doling out wine, but is a bit of a farmer besides, and his business is no sinecure. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... that still so divided and still so unsettled town. What with all those murderers and man-slayers, thieves and prostitutes, skulkers and secret rebels, on the one hand, and with Governor God's-peace and his so unaccountable and so autocratic ways, on the other hand, the Recorder's office was no sinecure. All the misdemeanours and malpractices of the town,—and they were happening every day and every night,—were all reported to the Recorder; they were all, so to say, charged home upon the Recorder, and he was held responsible for them all; till his office was a perfect laystall ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... were as sociably disposed as the little tomtit—for that is also one of his names—bird study would be a delight, and almost a sinecure. Trustful and fearless, he often comes within a few feet of you, and fixes you with his keen little eyes, which dart out innumerable interrogation points. Sometimes he calls his own name in a saucy way, "Chick-a-dee-dee, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... are thus laid down in the Rajtarangini. It is evident, as Professor H. H. Wilson says, that the royal status was by no means a sinecure. But the rules are evidently the closet work of some pedantic, dogmatic Brahman, teaching kingcraft to kings. He directs his instructions, not to subordinate judges, but to the Raja as the chief ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... But I was about to say that there is no reason to think their treatment was generally rigorous. We do not hear of any such office among them as that of the Roman Lorarii, whose office appears by the dramatists to have been no sinecure. And it is certain that they possessed in the laws, in the religion, and probably in the manners of the country, a greater degree of protection than existed to alleviate the lot of ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... grandeur; that it not only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had long been intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another Dutchman asked him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he was well aware could never be called a sinecure place, and was so precarious in its tenure. "Foolish vanity," answered the Minister, "can never pay enough for the gratification of its desires. All the Schimmelpennincks in the world do not possess property ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of friends, does not take refuge in solitude; he tries always for something of substitute; sees his man once or twice,—in several instances once only, and leaves him to his pension in sinecure thenceforth. Cornelius de Pauw, the rich Canon of Xanten (Uncle of Anacharsis Klootz, the afterwards renowned), came on those principles; hung on for six months, not liked, not liking; and was then permitted to go home for good, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... lately said, 'It is easy for my Lord C. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure acquisitions from the public money to boast of their patriotism, and keep aloof from temptation, but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... mentally incapable nor lacking in personal courage. He might have served his King most acceptably in many posts of routine officialdom, but he was not the man to handle the destinies of half a continent in critical years. His mission, to be sure, was no sinecure, for the Iroquois had grown bolder with the assurance of support from the English. Now that they were securing arms and ammunition from Albany it was probable that they would carry their raids right to the ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... to be patient with Colette, as she seemed to take a delight in gathering round herself all the young men who were most likely to exasperate Christophe: disgusting little snobs, most of them wealthy, all of them idle, or jobbed into a sinecure in some government office—which amounts to the same thing. They all wrote—or pretended to write. That was an itch of the Third Republic. It was a sort of indolent vanity,—intellectual work being the hardest of all to control, and most easily lending itself to the game ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... present sovereign, on whose prudence and exalted virtues he seemed to think it rested. He said he thought his little kingdom had aped the style of the great monarchies too much, and that he should like to abolish a good many high sounding titles, sinecure offices, the household troops, and some of the "imitation pomp" of his court. He said he had never enjoyed anything so much since his accession as the hookupu of the morning, and asked me what I thought of it. I was glad to be able to answer truthfully that I had never seen ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... that the office of the Forest Ranger is by no means a sinecure. He works hard and he works long and alone and our kindly thoughts should go out to him in ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... satisfied, my new occupation was likely to be no sinecure; there was evidently work enough to keep me constantly employed, and WAKOMETKLA would no doubt see to it that I wasted no time. For the remainder of the day I was kept hard at it, with the exception of the brief period allowed me for partaking of my food. So ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... master of the Lower Fifth into a premature grave, needed a firm hand. Indeed, they generally needed not only a firm hand, but a firm hand grasping a serviceable walking-stick. Add to these Harrison himself, and others of a similar calibre, and it will be seen that Graham's post was no sinecure. It was Harrison's custom to throw off his mask at night with his other garments, and appear in his true character of an abandoned villain, willing to stick at nothing as long as he could do it strictly incog. In this capacity he had come into constant contact ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... he put his hand on his heart, saying, "I am the trusty guardian of my own honour."—"Then," replied Sir Boyle Roche, "I congratulate my honourable friend in the snug little sinecure to which he ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... railroad influence should control these appointments, the power to suspend the long and short haul clause would be the chief and perhaps the only power exercised by the commission. There was great danger that the office of Interstate Commerce Commissioner might become a sinecure for servile railroad lawyers, as similar State officers had been before, and that a public trust might be turned into an additional corporation agency for evil. The selection of the commissioners, and especially that of Judge T. M. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... we were still encamped here, I organized a football match and acted as referee, which in a tropical sun is no sinecure, I can tell you. On Wednesday I rode into Kroonstadt and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Lowry, Mr. Lane, the Canadian chaplain, and Mr. Carey, the resident Wesleyan minister, and we ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... by practice, is a beggar. From the seedy-looking rascal in the street, of whom you incautiously ask the way, and who piteously whines 'para zapatos' - for the wear and tear of shoe leather, to the highest official, one and all hold out their hands for the copper CUARTO or the eleemosynary sinecure. As it was then, so is it now; the Government wants support, and it is always to be had, at a price; deputies always want 'places.' For every duty the functionary performs, or ought to perform, he receives his bribe. The Government is too poor ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Maurillac, without considering that he was leaving his wife and daughter behind him almost penniless, but not being able to make up his mind to come down in the world, to vegetate, to fight against his creditors, to accept the derisive alms of some sinecure, poisoned himself, like a shop girl who is ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... seventeen . . . twenty-one,. . 'm'm . . . it takes a heap for a majority. Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There. . . . Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious old curmudgeon. Son-in-law. . . . sinecure in the negro institution . . . .That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . . sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- in-law . . . And everybody has 'em . . . Let's see: . . . sixty- one. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner |
